


Hard Soul to Save

by Angelic_Hellraiser



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Canon Compliant, Eventual Smut, F/M, Post TROS, SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS, TRoS Spoilers, angsty as hell, but i'll try for reylo, dreams and desperate sex ghosts, for now anyway, i'm gonna make this HEA somehow mfs, idk i'm shit at canon sw lore, mostly rey alone on her own journey, rey is not okay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 21:40:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21855829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angelic_Hellraiser/pseuds/Angelic_Hellraiser
Summary: "On this champagne, drunken hopeAgainst the current, all aloneEverybody, see, I love him"Thank you self for ripping out your own heart over and over again.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey
Comments: 15
Kudos: 59





	Hard Soul to Save

**Author's Note:**

> **SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS**  
>  **SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS**  
>    
> **A/N:** I felt like abusing myself because FUUUUUUUUUUUCK. These beautiful space idiots deserved BETTER but I need to get this ANGST out of my system. I can never forgive this kind of injustice. REYLO DESERVED BETTER. I have no idea what this mess is. I suppose it's my coping mechanism. Will I finish it? Idk. Leave feedback if you wish. Also, I've not watched the movie yet, just caught most of the Reylo scenes, so if anything doesn't add up for the other bits idgaf and I'm lazy. Yay. Anyway... Enjoy! o/

* * *

_._

_"Cause you're a hard soul to save,_

_With an ocean in the way._

_But I'll get around it._

_**I'll get around it**."_

_._

* * *

He had spoken to her again. Another night restless. Dreams earnest and tossing like a desperate sea, and cheeks dried with salt.

Rey licked her lips.

She tasted like the sea. 

Rising from her cot, she stretched mechanically and listened to the _pop-pop-pop_ of her spine, felt her muscles groan and burn with movement; then, turned and walked out into the predawn chill of the desert morning. It was empty. Same as the day prior, and the day prior to that. Finn and the others hadn't contacted her for weeks. They had left her to her own thoughts, the funerals for all the fallen and the celebrations distraction enough for them. 

But she hadn't attended. She had sat most nights as the stars crowned the horizon with her throat tight and her hands cold in her empty lap. As she did now, sat atop the dried mud hovel with a threadbare blanket and her flimsy nightgown. She glanced down at her bare legs. She had always found gooseflesh so strange. His eyes flashed before her mind and she blinked, turning her gaze back up to the sky. His touch ghosted over her flesh, but it was only a memory. The gooseflesh rose just the same, her stomach muscles quivering at the recollection of that day. How his power had warmed her as it urged her heart to beat, to pound, her blood igniting through her veins like a fire.

_Alive._

A hollowness thumped in her chest along with her heartbeat, a painful swelling of emptiness that she had tried for weeks to chase away. Yet here it was, goading her. 

Her eyes stung with tears, though she refused to let them fall. She had cried enough. Now all she was... was weary. It felt endless and she hated it — this choking cycle of his smile everywhere she looked, everywhere she slept. It had branded into her consciousness, immortal, agonizing. Beautiful. 

"I miss you," she whispered to the stars. 

o

o-o

o

_"Rey."_

She turned, but the hut was empty, the shadows barren. 

_'Stop it.'_ she snarled, turning back to scrub at her clothing. The bar of soap anchored her, hard and unforgiving in her grasp as she raked it across the washboard. The water had gone cold, but still the stains endured as if mocking her. A sardonic grin marred her face, though it fast became a grimace. Then, a sob escaped her, too fast for her to stop it...

And she threw the bar of soap against the wall. The force of the blow left a wound so deep she could see a sliver of the night sky. Rey would have to fill it in tomorrow. For now, she sunk to her knees and wept. She wept for hours and hours, until her lungs felt abused and her throat ached with each breath.

There were no other sounds that night. Only hers. 

o

o-o

o

Rey was dreaming. She could always tell the difference. It was the vibrancy of color. Dreams were always so much more than the waking world, brighter, hazier. Like flurries of dust in the evening sun. She lay back, feeling the cool touch of grass beneath her and let a smile grace her lips. The clouds above coasted lazily as she watched them. Her thoughts wandered quietly across her mind like those clouds, simple and light. Rey loved dreams like this. She tried to recall memories of her parents and her home planet; if there had been such greenery for her to roll around in as a child. She decided that there had been because she _wanted_ to. Lie or not, it was hers. 

"Your upper lip disappears when you grin."

A startled shiver ran down her spine and her eyes snapped open. She hadn't realized she'd closed them. 

He stood above her, hair unkempt, dirty and blood smearing her cheek much as it had that day. His eyebrow rose and she swallowed a strangled sound. She thought distantly that it might have been his name, but he was already kneeling down to her and she rose up on her elbows in anticipation. His fingers feathered along her brow, skimming her jaw. "You're not eating," he said plainly.

She looked away petulantly.

His fingers slowed, circling to the back of her neck. "You should eat."

Rey shook her head, refusing to give him her eyes. "I'm fine."

"Rey."

Her chin trembled.

He leaned closer and she could smell him, smoke and leather and heat. If she reached out, she could probably even feel the phantom beat of his heart.

"Rey." his timbre dropped and her lashes fluttered as his lips brushed her cheek. Soft. Chaste.

She abruptly pulled away, rushing to her feet. "Don't," she snapped, still refusing to look at him, "stop doing this to me! Why are you doing this? Why?! It isn't fair! How can you be so cruel to me, Ben?!" 

The silence stretched, rising around her like water, like an ocean. When she opened her eyes the clouds above were brighter than ever, the sun cutting through them like white fire. Rey inhaled shakily, her shoulders wound tight as she glanced over at him. He was still kneeling, looking up at her with those soulful dark eyes. "I'm sorry."

The admission stunned her. It had been soft, almost inaudible. But she couldn't do this. Every dream was the same, each one ending with his touch turning cold, vanishing like the night along with him. And she would wake alone, staring at the dull colorless wall of her hut. 

"Let me go, Ben." Her voice came out reedy and broken, though she knew the truth. He wasn't the only one holding on. He always knew the truth when it came to her.

He reached out, bare hand tentative. She looked down at it, her fingers twitching instinctively. Above them, the sun dimmed, caught behind a cloud as she let him take her hand. He pulled it gingerly to his lips, nuzzling her knuckles with open-mouthed kisses. Rey swallowed against the barbed lump in her throat, but it felt like nothing would go down. She kept trying, yet the pain only grew. It was her heart in her throat, she thought. The rebellious beating thing was trying to escape her chest and leap out at him. 

"Do you want to let this go, Rey?" he asked, voice small. Afraid.

She closed her eyes, slamming her opposite fist against her chest in a bid to do something, anything. "No." she replied, tears creeping down to her lips. She licked at them. The sea. 

_Our sea._

She woke the next morning with her knuckles still tingling from his touch.

o

o-o

o

Drinking wasn't a natural habit of hers, but today had been long. Finn had visited her, Rose at his side with a weak smile every now and then. The other woman still wasn't sure what to say, Rey knew. No one was sure. Though it was never expressed aloud, everyone knew though... _Thanks to Finn's big mouth_ , she thought darkly. But she could not fault him. It was his nature.

And he cared. She drained her glass.

Finn had also brought her something of Leia's. Apparently Poe had found it in her private quarters and a note with Rey's name attached to it. _'For when you're ready'_ was all it said, written in the general's elegant script. Rey glanced down at it on the table before her, wondering idly if Ben had written with the same kind of painstaking consideration. _Of course he did,_ she answered herself. Leia must have been the one to teach him. 

"Don't you think you should get home, Rey?" the bartender asked. 

Rey shrugged indifferently. Mose Eisley was a bustling place during the day, but at night most hastened to their little hearths with what little they had and left the streets to the less than sincere citizens. Many were travelers and vagabonds, smugglers and traders, but Rey scarcely noticed them in her walks back to her hut. Tonight would be much the same, she was certain. Half drunk out of her mind, teetering aimlessly beneath the stars until she reached her door and collapsing onto her cot. Sleep would come swiftly, a dreamless sleep thankfully. 

"It's getting late, little one." the bartender urged tenderly.

"I'm fine, Gragor." she muttered.

"You have said that every night you show up here," he replied as he wiped down the counter. "Anyone who has to keep saying that is not fine."

She waved him off dismissively. "I think I'll leave soon." The confession came out of nowhere and it surprised her.

"Where do you think you'll go?" he asked.

She blinked down at Leia's note. Then, tucked it safely away in her pocket. "I don't know... but I'm not ready yet."

He watched her perplexedly as she offered him her tab and left, bumping into patrons as she passed out into the dying evening light. 

o

o-o

o

Rey wasn't sure why she had stayed for so long. Perhaps it was out of duty, perhaps desperation. Nothing was clear anymore. The Falcon's mechanisms hummed peacefully around her as she coasted in hyperspace, its light bathing her face in hues of cerulean blue. The lack of BB-8's delightful chirps hadn't crossed her mind until now. She had sent the droid back to Poe the very evening after burying Luke's and Leia's sabers. His woeful sound as she had ushered him back to his master filled her mind. But he belonged with ones who could interact with him and she...

Rey's hand crawled up to the strap of leather at her bicep. She pulled it away. The scar felt smooth beneath her fingertips, risen flesh left white after it had healed. Snoke's throne room had kindled then, its red curtains charred and falling away to reveal the endless blanket of space. And Ben's pallid face. His offered hand. 

She wondered at the image, thinking what could have been had she taken it. Would he have survived? Would the galaxy have been razed to ashes? What would she have become? A granddaughter of the late emperor; what ugly darkness crept in the deepest recesses of her soul? Even after defeating Palpatine and losing — she swallowed hard, forcing Ben's name from her mouth aloud — she still didn't know. 

And that frightened her. 

And without Ben...

She shook her head and retreated to the sleeping quarters. Chewie glanced up at her as she passed through the galley, his watchful eyes prudent. After his short excursion with Lando Calrissian he had returned to Rey just in time to offer her passage off Tatooine. She'd thought it lucky at the time. Now, fate perhaps? What did it matter? She smiled dimly as she looked up at him and trudged on to the spacious cot near the rear of the ship. A sigh escaped her the second her body hit the comfortable mattress and she closed her eyes. 

Sleep came unexpectedly, slipping her away into soft, warm shadows. Rey welcomed it, turning into the heat of a solid chest. 

"You've been avoiding me." he murmured into her hair. 

She leaned up into the nape of his neck, latching her mouth onto his flesh like an animal and he hummed at her answer. The vibration of his voice echoed down to her bones and she savored it, sinking her teeth in. A darker part of her hoped she left bruises, maybe even a scar. Anything to remind him of her. Her hands skimmed over his chest greedily, taking the ragged remains of his black tunic into her fists and she pulled. He obeyed her with a sigh, wrapping his arms around her and rolling her atop him. 

"Do you think Maz knows your coming?" he asked.

She paused, laying her head against his shoulder but keeping her eyes closed. "You scarcely know her."

He chuckled a lovely, earthy sound. "My dad took me around her more than a few times. I think I know her better than you."

She scoffed. "You like to talk a lot. You know that?"

He shifted, his chin brushing her nose as he turned to face her.

She refused to open her eyes. 

He waited, but she couldn't look at him. Not tonight. "Do you want me to stop talking, Rey?"

She grimaced, her teeth clamping together. A hand came to cradle her cheek, sweeping away windswept tendrils of her hair and she relinquished a shuddering sigh. "I'd give anything to hear your voice again," she confessed. "I'd give anything to see your face, to see you smile, to..." The fingertips of that hand settled over her lips and she looked at him on instinct then, his touch summoning an ache so overwhelming that she ducked into his embrace. Her sobs sounded ugly to her own ears, wet and messy and jagged. His opposite hand soothed over her back, caressing along her spine in slow mitigating circles. She felt like a child in his arms. "You should have taken _my_ hand. Why hadn't you just taken my hand in that throne room, Ben? Why?" _You would be alive!_ she wanted to scream, but she couldn't. The ocean in her chest was drowning her.

"I'd give anything to do that. I'd go back and do things right," he whispered, and she was sure she heard tears in his voice, too. 

She wept harder, pulling at his tunic so roughly she heard the material give under her anguish. "All I wanted was you! Just you!"

His body shook with hers and his arms tightened, pulling her against him to the point of pain but she didn't care. At least for now, this felt solid. It felt real. "I hate you," she wanted to say, but it came out quite different. 

His fingers curled under her chin and drew her face to his. He stared her, his dark eyes glistening as he said, "I know." Then, his lips were upon hers and she was falling, drowning in his taste at last. It was pure bliss, livening her body with wave after wave of electric _sensation_. She felt high, drugged even. When he broke the kiss, she chased after him, stealing his mouth once more with unyielding resolve. He tasted the same as that day and it made her sob. He opened his mouth to accept the sound and the feel of his tongue against her own made her heart skip a beat. She deepened the kiss and he groaned as she boldly explored his mouth. 

_'So impatient.'_ she heard his voice murmur within her mind.

Their bond flared brightly with the remembered hum playing off her nerve-endings like a violin and making her body sing. She had missed it so dearly. But now it was here and he was in her arms. It didn't matter. Dream or not. He was hers. 

"Always," he breathed as he broke away.

The next second, he took control and Rey let him, rolling over with him as he shifted his weight on top of her. This was what she had craved all those months, a year of knowing this man with the secret desires in her heart nearly tearing her apart. She relished everything of him she could, inhaling his scent as if it were oxygen itself. He replied by planting little nibbles along her collar bone and she sighed contentedly, her hands combing through his unruly hair. He groaned again, much louder this time. 

_'You like when someone combs their fingers through your hair.'_ she thought to herself. His mother likely did it to him as a child. The force bond glowed with his answer. A memory of a young boy no more than a toddler seated in a lap of white satin, bellowing sleeves draped around him and slender fingers taming his black hair. Rey's heart suddenly ached for Leia and Ben halted, looking up to face her. She glanced away sheepishly.

The silence turned heavy and the yearning in his voice made her clamp her eyes shut. "Do you ever see her?"

"Rarely," she said. 

Rey didn't have to ask for his answer. She already knew what it would be. Wherever Ben was, he was not in a place where he could reach his family. That much had become clear the first night she found him lingering near her cot on Tatooine, his back hunched as he faced away from her and his hand just shy of her own on the mattress. At the time, she had been too stunned to reach for it. 

"What does she say?"

Before Rey could reply, a hand shook her arm and the dream began to fade. Ben's hold tightened, but she was already waking, starting up from the cot with a gasp. His warmth fled, but she clung to its remnants like a blanket as she blinked confusedly up at the one who had woken her. Chewie met her eyes expectantly and grunted, alerting her that they would be arriving soon. He departed a second later, heading for the cockpit. Rey sat there mutely...

... as Ben's warmth faded completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **FEEDBACK IS WELCOME!!! FORGIVE TYPOS. I WROTE THIS FAST & DIDN'T HAVE A BETA READER.**


End file.
